Congress: This Message is For You

Congress: This Message is For You

As long as there are hungry people in this land, you are not doing your job. As long as there are cold homeless people in this land, you are not doing your job. As long there as there is available health care and people can't afford it, you are not doing your job. Even more importantly, if there is not enough food, housing and healthcare services available, you are not doing your job.

The Preamble of the Constitution declares the purpose of the Federal government to be to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity." Amidst all the Conservative rhetoric of "government overreach" you are found guilty of massive "under reach."

In this modern age, it is a scandal that there are no educational prerequisites for the holding of public office. All that seems to be necessary to get elected is an opinion and a checkbook funded by interests other than what the Preamble (above) states.

As we debate and declare whether or not we believe the President committed Federal crimes, abuse of power, campaign election violations, extortion, complicity in foreign election interference or a host of other "high crimes and misdemeanors", we have lost perspective of the greater failure of Office.

We elected a President who is bound and determined to commit "crimes against humanity" with each and every unilateral policy directive over his signature. The list is longer than his arm.  As partial list of such policies includes: stripping of clean water laws and allowing more mining and drilling wastes to be dumped in rivers and streams; permitting more air pollution with challenging California's auto emissions levels; allowing coal fly-ash to not be handled properly; parceling out national monuments for logging, mining and fracking; withholding Federal disaster aid to people he does not like; curtailing funding for SNAP; hamstringing farmers with tariffs; the list goes on.

Although the President has the authority to do such things FOR THE RIGHT REASONS, he does them for all the wrong ones. Whether they are prosecutable crimes or not they fail the test of the purpose of the Federal government. In total these acts rise to the level of impeachable offense. His callous disregard for human needs is the worst of his offenses. Congress' failure to stop him makes you complicit and equally guilty.

We Ain't Seen Nothing Yet.

Donald Trump seems wholly unprepared to stand against the questioning of his authority. The House of Representatives Impeachment Inquiry currently being played out in the Autumn of 2019 itself is an indictment of this President, in his mind, even before they come to the conclusion that there are sufficient grounds to Impeach.

This man cannot stand even to have a discussion of his orders and policies among his own staff and inner circle. His decisions issue from his head fully formed, such as they are, and perfect in his assessment. Anyone who dares to suggest otherwise risks his wrath, being disparaged, fired and disavowed on the Twitter-stage as someone who always was inferior and not up to the job.

As the House investigations continue to gather evidence he has grown more radical and defensive. He has called for impeachment [sic] of the lead Representatives and Speaker of the House for treason, and generally bullying him. He has gone as far as to characterize the inquiry as a lynching. The madness of his methods grows more extreme by the day.

If the President feels the inquiry is unfair, fraudulent and capricious now, wait until the indictment is issued.

The President has reached a level of crazy and recklessness not before seen in a US Chief Executive. He is "on the ropes" as they say in boxing. He is in the corner and being pummeled by the world, not just a few Democrats in the House. He is like the black knight of the Monty Python skit where the knight gets his limbs chopped of even as he hops around declaring "tiz only a flesh wound." It would be funny, but he can salt the fields as he is being forced into retreat. We have not seen the worst he can do.

There remains only 13 months until the 2020 elections either rebukes his Administration or reaffirm it. A sizable portion of that time will be spent with the House moving forward with the Constitutional impeachment process and the President conducting nearly weekly #StopMyImpeachmentRallies.

As he flails and grapples for a hand and foothold to stay afloat, we will see the escalation of impeachable behavior and acts that are calculated to make the otherwise orderly process into chaos. At this point in time he has nothing more to lose that he hasn't already lost in the political arena. He can only be removed from office once. The evidence already known is sufficient for removal if the GOP Senate doesn't become complicit in his misdeeds and refuse to remove.

We haven't seen anything yet.

Why Democracy is So Essential

Why Democracy is So Essential

Democracy is one of those things which tends to be minimized and ignored while you have it and miss it terribly when it is compromise or gone. To some degree one might consider that Nature and Politics both abhor a vacuum, Democracy is the gatekeeper which keeps out the other forms of government and preserves the ability of the governed to keep control and ward off being ruled by an overwhelming force.

Democracies are the only societies where the people in charge are appointed by the people and serve the people and can be replaced by the people. In all other forms of government the people are ruled over by an entity which exercises total control and makes and enforces all the rules with police and military units.

Kingdoms are rules over by men who claim their rights by divine appointment or familial heritage. Dictators rule by military backing and threats of imprisonment and death. Communism rules by a Committee who makes the appearance group planning and administration by men who ascribe to the philosophy of a charismatic progenitor. In this latter example there have been Stalinist following Stalin, Trotskyites, Marxists, Leninists, Maoists, a myriad of Southeast Asian Communist Dictators, the Kim Jung lineage of North Korea, a dozen or so South American dictators variously promoting Marx or trying to oust Marxists. Sub-Saharan Africa has their menagerie of similar men seizing power and killing their people to establish and retain control.

Fascism is the merging of Corporate profit motives with the exercise governmental dictates.   Corporate entities buy the people's resources and make the rules for how they will be exploited. The "government" is then employed as alleged authority for enforcing the rules and requiring compliance.

Libertarianism is not further mentioned here because it is a fiction and doesn't exist outside the realm of textbooks on Political Science. Anarchy would be a better description.

In the US we have taken a huge step in ushering in Fascism over government of, by and for the people with the passage of the incredibly misleading named law, Citizens United. For more than a century corporations have been struggling to attain codified Personhood for the artificial lifeform they aspire to be. They claim the human rights protected by the US Constitution for themselves too.  They can amass huge sums of money from their shareholders and buy legislative favor in opposition to what humans want and need.

People and Corporations are mostly at odds with each other for what they want and need. Corporations cannot understand or feel pain so it is easy for them to inflict it on people. When corporations die they can preserve their resources hop to another body or be resurrected in another time and place. When people die they are gone and buried.

Never feel that there is enough Democracy. It can slip away and evaporate through natural means or be chipped away at by the corporate pickaxe. Voting is not a matter of Democrat or Republican any longer. It is a choice between government by the people or being ruled over by a collection of corporations whose goals are profits and human needs are "external" to their enterprise.